The Who single that Roger Daltrey said is one of the best they recorded

Formed in London, England back in the early 60s, The Who became one of the most influential bands of all time. The group originally formed by Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon sold an estimated amount of more than 100 million records worldwide and were one of the most important bands in the world, especially in the 60s and 70s.

Their line-up was tragically changed twice. First with the death of Keith Moon in 1978 at the age of 32 and then with the passing of John Entwistle in 2002 at the age of 57. Since then the group has continued to be active, being led by Pete and Roger. They released 12 studio albums and 58 singles so far. It’s hard to say which is their best single released but Roger Daltrey once named one of the best, in his opinion.

The Who single that Roger Daltrey said is one of the best they recorded

As the vocalist Roger Daltrey said in an interview with UNCUT in 2015, he believes that the single “I Can See For Miles” was one of the best The Who released over the decades. “I think it’s one of the best-produced singles we ever did. We spent literally a whole day putting down layer and layer of harmonies on the ‘miles and miles’ section. I always loved that song and you listen to the drumming on it, it’s extraordinary – like a steam engine.”

“That time, though, psychedelia, it was a bit too spongy for me. I found it pretentious and I didn’t like it. I couldn’t wait to get back to a good bit of Otis Redding. We did get into it in some ways but the difference between The Who and all these other bands getting into psychedelia was that, though we were all into the anti-war movement, every time we went on stage we were showing them what war was really like!”

He continued:

“At Monterey they’d come to hear all this peace and love music. Not see us smash up our gear and blow things up. That’s what we did. Woke them up a bit! That was all part of our success, though. The Who were the­ odd men out, totally different,” Roger Daltrey said.

Released in 1967 as a single, “I Can See For Miles” was also part of the album “The Who Sell Out”, released in the same year. Like almost the entire discography of the band, this song was also written by Pete Townshend, who has always been their main songwriter. At the time the song peaked at number 10 on the United Kingdom Singles Chart. In the United States it peaked at number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100.

It’s certainly one of the most famous songs recorded by The Who. It has been played live by them a few times. According to Setlist.FM, the track was part of their shows so far 259 times and 140 times at Roger Daltrey’s solo shows.

Daltrey thinks the track is brilliant and inspired the album “Tommy” a little bit

Unlike groups like The Beatles, in the 60s The Who was so far a band more famous for their singles, not the albums. As Daltrey told Rolling Stone in 2013, that was something that bothered Pete Townshend. So the guitarist and main songwriter decided that he wanted to do a strong album, not thinking about singles. The result was the acclaimed “Tommy”, released in 1969.

“When we went back into the studio, we just had a mediocre success with ‘I Can See For Miles’. I thought that was was a brilliant single. Probably one of the best we ever did. But with us being a singles band, it was wearing thin. Pete was getting worn down, sort’ve frazzled.”

“Having to come up with hit singles all the time, that’s the hard bit of the music industry. But coming up with music? That was much easier. Well, I don’t know about easier. . . It was more artistically attractive to him. So he came up with this idea of what life would be like if you had lived through just feeling vibrations,” Roger Daltrey said.